Blackouts on Thursdays

9:30 am, commuting to work. Looking like 5:30 am.

I thought it was bad coming home Wednesday. Thursday intruded on my consciousness at 6:40am with a bright flash and a loud thunderclap when a bolt of lightening hit near the house. I was awake instantly; that's what they must mean 'awake in a flash'. And so where all the little critters. Ruby was up on the bed staring at me, Max was down on the floor staring up at me, and Lucy leaped up onto my chest.

So I got up, put out the garbage and recyclables in the pouring rain, and then discovered that water was standing so deep in the back yard it was seeping into the back add-on and flooding the floor. Fortunately it's tiled in that area, so I grabbed towels (lots of towels) and sopped up the water and put 'em a big green carry-all tub to haul out to wash and dry them for a second round if needed. I left for work, my wife in charge of the critters and ready to sop up more water if the need arose.

Then I loaded up the commute-mobile and headed to the east side through the pouring rain.

Even though I didn't start out until 9am, it was still so dark that the highway lights were still lit on the way in.

Rain everywhere, trickling off of everything, and dark all the way into work. It stayed dark and gloomy into the afternoon.

I left around 1pm, after a two hour dry run that started 15 minutes late because I showed up late. I'd been getting text messages from my wife, and when she told me more water was in the back room of the house, that's when I decided to head on home. On the drive home the day had brightened to a lighter shade of gloom, but it was still a constant pouring rain.

I stopped off by a Home Depot to pick up some silicon sealant. When I got home I finally went out back and figured out what to do to help drain the water away from the back of the house. We've been in that house since 1985, and the sand had shifted just enough to change how the water drained away from the house. A quick trenching at one spot with a shovel, and the standing water eventually disappeared. Later this weekend, when it stops raining, I have another honeydew task to make it a little cleaner.

For all the rain and wind, the downed limbs, and the bit of flooding in the back, we got off pretty easy compared to some. Over 20,000 people lost power in the area and are still without. A few tornadoes touched down, one near Tampa. Another home in College Park had a tree blown into there house on top of the master bedroom. And there were multitudinous wrecks on I-4, the 408, I-95, and numerous surface streets.

I. Care

And I. Care, the house teddy, gives her silent approval. Our guardian teddy, along with Lucy the guard cat and Ruby the guard Lab, stand constant vigil over us all.

Technical

All shot with the Olympus E-1 and Sigma 30mm at ISO 100. All RAW. All post-processed (a little) in Lightroom 3.3. The last photo of I. Care photographed at f/1.4. Auto focus, in dim light, with the E-1. Did I mention how addictive that eight-year-old, 5MP so-called obsolete camera is? It may be just 5MP, but it's 5 awesome MP, each and every one. And that 30mm 1:1.4 acts as if it was made for the E-1. I couldn't ask for a better body and lens combination.

All hail the E-1!